"The entire operation was a waste of federal resources, he told Kimmel, noting that if he had been allowed to turn himself in, law enforcement wouldn't have to have all these people following me around. But it was also more than that, he added. They want to embarrass you. They want to intimidate you. They want to instill fear. And so that's why they did it that way."
"Lemon was covering the protest, in which demonstrators stormed the church and interrupted Sunday service, as an independent journalist. On Monday, in his first interview since the incident, Lemon told late-night host Jimmy Kimmel that his attorney had tried to contact [federal authorities] once, maybe twice to let them know he was willing to just go in to face the charges, but did not hear back from them."
Don Lemon was arrested late Thursday night in Beverly Hills by about a dozen federal agents and charged with interfering with the First Amendment rights of worshipers at a St. Paul church on Jan. 17. He was covering an anti‑ICE protest in which demonstrators stormed the church and interrupted Sunday service as an independent journalist. Lemon's attorney attempted to contact federal authorities to offer a voluntary surrender but did not receive a response. Agents arrested Lemon at his hotel while he was covering the Grammy Awards; agents initially did not have a warrant and an FBI agent later displayed a warrant on a cellphone. Lemon described the arrest operation as a waste of federal resources, saying it appeared designed to embarrass, intimidate and instill fear, and he reiterated that he attended the event to chronicle it as a journalist.
Read at www.mercurynews.com
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